Amazon Apocalypse 6: Chapter 44

I waited for Takano to return, this time with Sakura’s father walking behind him. Nakano stood a bit taller than his father, though that might just have been the weight of age.

“Promise kept. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some important people to talk to.” Takano nudged his son’s shoulder and nodded in my direction.

Sakura’s father, Nakano, stood blinking in the middle of the party and looking around at the ruins all around him. He’d no doubt heard the sounds of battle, but I doubted he’d understood how destructive it had been until looking up at empty sky where there should have previously been a roof.

“I take it there was a bigger fight than usual?” Nakano asked.

I chuckled. “You could say that. There was a giant shark monster attacking the estate. Really terrifying. Fortunately, your daughter drove it away and saved the whole estate! This party is to celebrate her victory.”

“Our whole family’s victory! Young Sakura’s abilities prove the might of my bloodline!” Takano rubbed his hands together before clapping his son on the arm and departing back in the direction of the elder he was speaking to earlier.

Nakano studied the damage, then looked in the distance to his daughter, who was showing off a few attacks in the destroyed courtyard. He studied the ruins for a bit, then turned back to me.

“Skillfully done,” Nakano nodded to me in approval.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Drinks are over there if you’re interested.” I nodded back to open barrels of potent alcohol.

Nakano shook his head. “I know better than to try my luck with that stuff. I’ll need a clear head. Now that I’ve been released from house arrest, I must return to Earth. I fear what’s happened to my faction in my absence.”

“You don’t want to come to Crownhill with your daughter and me?”

“Truthfully, I would rather my daughter come stay with me. The last time I was in San Francisco, we were reasonably secure. I could keep her safe.” Nakano’s eyes lingered on his daughter in the distance, currently smashing another oni into the ground.

“It looks like she can take care of herself to me.”

Nakano made a half-hearted noise of discontent. It was like he wanted to disagree with me, but couldn’t find a good reason to do so.

“What problems is San Francisco facing?” I asked.

“Undead rule the outskirts of the city. My team and a few allies managed to forge a secure perimeter with makeshift walls. It is an uneasy alliance I barely managed to pull together. In my absence, I fear it may have fallen apart.” Nakano’s fingers fiddled with the cufflinks on his sleeves. I could tell his mind was already elsewhere, and as soon as he had the chance to say goodbye to Sakura, he would be leaving.

“You know, we had some undead problems back in Crownhill.” I gave Nakano an abbreviated account of what had happened to San Antonio, culminating in my final battle with the Lich King.

“Something similar may have happened to my shard. We are still on the third stage of the integration, and though all the major factions are now bound by treaty, the System has not allowed us to progress,” Nakano said.

“I happen to be quite well-versed in slaying undead. And I’m pretty good at building magical barriers, too. I’m sure you’ve seen how most walled cities here have warded walls. Stonework alone is rarely enough to repel high-level enemies.”

“I have seen such walls, but none of my crafters have the abilities to replicate what I’ve seen here. I was hoping my father would help me bring some of the crafters and warriors from this world back with me to craft defenses. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned.” Nakano grimaced.

“There’s still time. What do you say we help one another instead? I’ll take out the undead on your shard and put up some walls for your people. That should make surviving much easier.”

Nakano eyed me. “And what would you want in return?”

“Let me ask you a question first. How did you stop your oni kin from taking over San Francisco?” I asked.

“I bribed the low-ranking oni with wealth, resources, and monster hunting opportunities while falsifying information here on Onibushi. After forging some numbers, I turned the flow of goods on its head. Instead of us pouring resources into Onibushi, I had weapons, warriors, and fodder pouring in to aid in securing a perimeter around our city. What oni remain are more loyal to me than to any clan or faction here, and perfectly willing to become earthlings in spirit if not in body. That was the key to forcing the other survivor groups into an alliance with my faction,” Nakano explained.

I was impressed. Based on the way Sakura always spoke of him and what I knew of my company’s old CEO, I knew he’d come up with some clever means to get through the integration. But tricking the oni clans who thought they were showing up to collect slaves into providing free labor and resources instead was a stroke of pure genius.

“Very nice. As it happens, I’m dealing with a similar problem now. There is a city on my shard that contains a large portion of Kyoto. Oni have taken it over and duped the local humans into thinking they can’t advance past level 25. A bloody battle to take the city on my end would cost a lot of lives on both my end and theirs. I would like you to help me undermine the authority of the oni there and bring the city to its knees before I even need to drum up an army.”

Nakano ran fingers through his hair as he thought. “I might still have some business connections in Kyoto, assuming they survived the integration. And I haven’t been entirely idle while under house arrest here. I’ve made some valuable acquaintances among the Miyamoto Clan. I believe I can assist you with your problem.”

I held out my hand. “Then we have a deal.”

***

I had come to Onibushi to search for Sakura’s father and solve my New Kyoto issue. Assuming Sakura’s father could do everything he thought he could, I might have just solved both problems in one stroke.

Nakano left with us. To my surprise, one of the connections Nakano had made in the Miyamoto Clan was Kogai.

“I need to get out of here and lie low a while. Nakano here has the perfect place for that. And is even throwing in a few monsters for me to fight! And all I had to do was pay a bit of gold and help him recruit a dozen comrades! What a steal!” Kogai clapped Nakano on the back delightedly.

Nakano winced at the blow, but that didn't stop him from looking satisfied at the deal he'd struck.

I looked at Kogai’s comrades, most of whom I was pretty sure he’d been locked up with while I was looking for Sakura. And I was definitely sure Nakano was getting the better end of this deal. Kogai was basically paying money to become Nakano’s free labor. But that was exactly the sort of wit I needed to take down New Kyoto with minimal casualties on both sides.

Nakano and I exchanged teleportation array coordinates. The System probably wouldn’t let us teleport directly through its barriers, but it wouldn’t be too hard to make a layover in Themyscira first.

Sakura said goodbye to her father, though it was only a brief parting. We would be returning home to Crownhill to get things ready on our end while he did the same. If all went well on his end, I’d be hearing from him again within the week.

From there, Sakura and I returned home through the nearest teleportation array. Sakura leaned against my arm on the way back, and she had a slight smile on her face. She felt calmer too, like something that had been weighing on her was finally taken care of.

I shared the sentiment. If things went well, we might actually take down New Kyoto without a fight. There were a huge number of human civilians in the city, but if even a tenth of them got up to speed with adventuring and surviving in this new world, I’d have all the people I needed to keep this Australia-sized chunk of territory monster-free and habitable. The future was looking bright.

I returned home to find Crownhill much as I left it. There were a few more monsters, and there had been a few more clashes with New Kyoto, but my recent work revealing the lies of the Oni to a select few individuals was bearing some small amount of fruit.

It was far from enough to topple New Kyoto on its own, but the instability was forcing the Oni to stay in the city, limiting their territorial expansion and giving my adventurers more time to look for integration survivors on the outskirts of the city. While New Kyoto itself was the real prize, every small group of a hundred people or so was also a welcome boon to my city.

Bridget wasn’t home, but Reluna was, so I checked in on her first.

“Heavens above, Reluna, when was the last time you got out of that thing?” I asked.

“Mhuh...” Reluna moaned. Her fingers shifted and scattered a dozen pages on the ground next to me. I bent over and picked them up.

I’d set her to work on more paperwork while locked in the productivity enhancer, since it had been so effective on her before. And thanks to my recent tune-up, it was even more effective at keeping her extremely motivated.

But only the first few pages were the Architect language translations I’d been interested in before. During my upgrades, I’d given Governess some executive power over Reluna’s workload so she could be used more effectively, and it looked like Governess had decided she needed Reluna doing divination work full time.

I could see the utility in it, and truthfully, I should have had Reluna doing more divinations. She did them every now and again, and I assumed she’d tell me if she foresaw something unusual. But under Governess’ insistence and constant prodding through the productivity enhancer, Reluna had been at the task constantly and churned out much more comprehensive results.

Many of the notes were divinations regarding troop movements of the other factions, including Myrina’s Black Knights. There were also a lot of details containing a few random individuals in Crownhill. I recognized one of them immediately.

Chuck had originally been one of the thugs and raiders involved with Crownhill County Prison and all the guys living in the swamp outside of Crownhill, inhabiting former troll territory. After several traumatic brain injuries, he’d lost all his memories and turned over a new leaf.

As far as I knew, he was a fairly well-regarded adventurer these days. Thanks to all his time on the battlefield, he was pretty far into the C-Grade and might even hit B-Grade by the end of the integration.

I decided to check in with Governess about this and everything else she and Reluna were up to.

“Welcome back, milord,” Governess said in greeting. “As for Reluna, when I noticed her being underutilized, I reallocated her task list. However, I realized her divination was inconsistent, and so replicated your debugging procedure in an attempt to error correct. The individual whose file you are currently reading, Chuck, is attempting to seduce an automated shopkeeper subroutine, and thus is extremely easy to monitor. By having Reluna divine his activities and then comparing her divination to his own verbal reports, I can estimate the accuracy of her divination on hostile entities that are impossible to monitor directly.”

“Huh. That’s actually a pretty good idea. I assume everything about Myrina’s forces, predicting the weather, and the growth rate of garden crops are all similar controls?” I asked.

“Affirmative. Currently, Reluna has a sixty-two percent accuracy rate on her divinations, trending lower.”

I frowned. “That low? That’s only marginally better than a coin flip.”

“Initial tests indicated an accuracy of nearly seventy percent at the start of testing. The reason for the decline in accuracy over time is unknown, but worrying.”

I thought things over a bit and eventually realized what must be happening. As I understood it, Divination magic tapped into fate and the Kindling dimension, much as my luck abilities did. Not long ago, the Goddess in Jade had warned me about a gathering storm in the Kindling dimension, signalling something big was going to happen.

From the scale of the storm, I’d thought it was going to happen by now, which was part of the reason I’d been so eager to check back in with Crownhill. If I’d known whatever big event that was supposed to happen was going to hold off this long, I could have spent a bit more time off-world.

Rushing to A-Grade was still giving me a bit of a bad feeling, but I once again reaffirmed my need to pick up those last few levels and put myself on the edge of it. Surely getting access to those classes and job upgrade quests wouldn’t hurt as long as I didn’t complete them until whatever was causing this feeling passed.

“Keep up the work, Governess, though I may be borrowing Reluna for a bit. She’s unfortunately a bit underleveled these days compared to most of my companions, so I’ll be training her up a little. Mimiko and Cyra can help you if you run into problems.”

“Where will you be going, milord?” Governess asked.

“Any day now, I’ll be setting out for San Francisco. I’m still waiting for the signal to leave, but when I get it, I want to have another productivity enhancement device for Reluna to make sure she doesn’t slack off while she grinds a few levels for me.”

<Note>

Poor Chuck fell in love with a mannequin. Imagine what would happen if Carter took him to Mucaria and he saw one of Dane Delverson's sensual golems.